TANNER, Alain

Nationality:
Swiss.
Born:
Geneva, 6 December 1929.
Education:
Educated in economic sciences, Calvin College, Geneva.
Career:
Shipping clerk, early 1950s; moved to London, worked at British Film
Institute, 1955; assistant producer for the BBC, 1958; returned to
Switzerland, 1960; co-founder, Association Suisse des Réalisateurs,
early 1960s; director for Swiss French TV, 1964–69; began
collaboration with writer John Berger on
Une Ville à Chandigarh
, 1966; co-founder, Groupe 5, 1968.
Awards:
Experimental Film Prize, Venice Festival, for
Nice Time
, 1957; Best Screenplay (with Berger), National Society of Film Critics,
for
Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000
, 1976; Special Jury Prize, Cannes Festival, for
Les Années lumière
, 1981.

Films as Director:

1957

Nice Time
(short) (co-d)

1959

Ramuz, passage d'un poète
(short)

1962

L'Ecole
(sponsored film)

1964

Les Apprentis
(doc feature)

1966

Une Ville à Chandigarh

1969

Charles, mort ou vif
(
Charles, Dead or Alive
)

1971

Le Salamandre
(
The Salamander
) 1973;
Le Retour d'Afrique

1974

Le Milieu du monde
(
The Middle of the World
)

1976

Jonah qui aura 25 ans en l'année 2000
(
Jonah Who Will Be
25 in the Year 2000
)

1978

Messidor

1981

Les Années lumière
(
Light Years Away
)

1983

Dans la ville blanche
(
In the White City
)

1985

No Man's Land

1986

François Simon—La présence

1987

Flamme dans mon coeur
(
A Flame in My Heart
);
Vallée
Fantôme

1989

Femme de Rose Hill
(
The Woman of Rose Hill
)

1992

L'Homme que a perdu son ombre
(+ pr, sc)

1993

The Diary of Lady M
(+ pr)

1995

Les Hommes du port
(+ sc)

1996

Fourbi
(+ sc, pr)

1998

Requiem
(+ sc, pr)

1999

Jonas et Lila, à demain
(+ sc, pr)

Publications

By TANNER: book—

Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000
, with John Berger, Berkeley, 1983.

By TANNER: articles—

Interview with Michel Delahaye and others, in
Cahiers du Cinéma
(Paris), June 1969.

Alain Tanner's involvement with film began during his college
years. While attending Geneva's Calvin College, he and Claude
Goretta formed Geneva's first film society. It was during this time
that Tanner developed an admiration for the ethnographic documentaries of
Jean Rouch and fellow Swiss Henry Brandt, an influence that continued
throughout his career. After a brief stint with the Swiss merchant marine,
Tanner spent a year in London as an apprentice at the BFI, where, with
Goretta, he completed an experimental documentary,
Nice Time
, which chronicled the night life of Piccadilly Circus. While in London he
participated in the Free Cinema Movement, along with Karel Reisz, Tony
Richardson, and Lindsay Anderson. Through Anderson, Tanner made the
acquaintance of novelist and art critic John Berger, who would later write
the scenarios for
Le Salamandre, Middle of the World
,
Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000
, and
Le Retour d'Afrique.
Upon returning to Switzerland in 1960, Tanner completed some forty
documentaries for television. Among these were:
Les Apprentis
, which concerned the lives of teenagers (and created using the methods of
Rouch's direct cinema);
Une Ville à Chandigarh
, on the architecture designed by Le Corbusier for the Punjab capital (the
narration for this film was assembled by John Berger); and newsreel
coverage of the events of May 1968 in Paris. This last project provided
the ammunition for Tanner (once again with Goretta) to form Groupe 5, a
collective of Swiss filmmakers. They proposed an idea to Swiss TV for the
funding of full-length narrative features to be shot in 16-millimeter and
then blown-up to 35-millimeter for release. The plan enabled Tanner to
make his first feature,
Charles, Dead or Alive
, which won first prize at Locarno in 1969.

The film tells of a middle-aged industrialist who, on the eve of receiving
an award as the foremost business personality of the year, discovers his
disaffection for the institution-laden society in which he finds himself.
Following an innate sense of anarchism that Tanner posits as universal, he
attempts to reject this lifestyle. His retreat into madness is blocked by
his family and friends, who compel him, by appealing to his sense of duty,
to resume his responsibilities.

All Tanner's films follow a similar scenario: individuals or a
group become alienated from society; rejecting it, they try to forge a new
society answerable to themselves alone, only to be defeated by the
relentless pressures of traditional society's institutions, whose
commerce they never cease to require. This theme receives its fullest and
most moving expression in
Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000.
Here the failure of the collective and the survivors of 1968, who come
together at Marguerite's farm outside Geneva, is not viewed as a
defeat so much as one generation's attempt to keep the hope of
radical social change alive by passing on the fruits of its mistakes, that
is, its education or its lore, to the succeeding generation.

Tanner's style is a blend of documentary and fable. He uses
techniques such as one scene/one shot, a staple of
cinéma-vérité documentary, to portray a fable or
folk-story. This tension between fact and fiction, documentary and fable,
receives its most exacting treatment in
Le Salamandre.
Rosemonde's indomitable, rebellious vitality repeatedly defeats
the efforts of the two journalists to harness it in a pliable narrative
form. After
Jonah
, Tanner introduces a darker vision in
Messidor, Light Years Away
, and
Dans la ville blanche.
The possibility of escaping society by returning to nature is explored
and shown to be equally provisional. The tyranny of physical need is
portrayed as being just as oppressive and compromising as that of the
social world.

—Dennis Nastav

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